ARM CEO Simon Segars has defended the company’s stance on smartphone graphics technology linked to a patent suit brought forward by chip maker Nvidia.
On Monday, the chief executive defended the firm’s intellectual property, involved in a looming patent suit brought forward by Nvidia against both Samsung Electronics and Qualcomm.
Earlier this month, Nvidia revealed it planned to sue Qualcomm and Samsung over the alleged infringement of patents related to graphics chip technology. The chip maker says that both companies have infringed upon GPU-based patents covering elements such as programmable shading, unified shaders and multithreaded parallel processing.
Nvidia attempted to hold talks with Samsung over a licensing agreement for the seven patents, but talks reportedly broke down after the South Korean electronics maker said the alleged infringement was a supplier problem. Nvidia said:
“Without licensing Nvidia’s patented GPU technology, Samsung and Qualcomm have chosen to deploy our IP without proper compensation to us. This is inconsistent with our strategy to earn an appropriate return on our investment. In federal court, Nvidia is demanding a jury trial in order to obtain damages for patent infringement.”
While the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company has not said it is suing ARM or Imagination, the firm plans to ask the US International Trade Commission for damages and to ban the sale of Samsung devices containing ARM’s Mali, Imagination’s PowerVR or Qualcomm’s graphics technology. As an example, a sales ban could impact the Samsung Galaxy Tab range and Galaxy S4 smartphones.
In response to the patent suit, as reported by Reuters, Segars commented:
“We stand behind our IP. To the extent that we need to, we absolutely work with our partners when something like this happens.”
Source: zdnet.com
